Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/352

THE AWKWARD AGE without answering Vanderbank, fixed again Mrs. Brook, to whom he echoed without expression: "Hate you?"

The next moment, while he remained in presence with Vanderbank, Mrs. Brook was pointing out her meaning to him from the cushioned corner he had quitted. "Why, when you come back to town, you come straight as it were, here."

"Ah, what's that," the Duchess asked in his interest, "but to follow Nanda as closely as possible, or at any rate to keep well with her?"

Mrs. Brook, however, had no ear for this plea. "And when I, coming here too, and thinking only of my chance to 'meet' you, do my very sweetest to catch your eye, you're entirely given up—"

"To trying of course," the Duchess broke in afresh, "to keep well with me!"

Mrs. Brook now had a smile for her. "Ah, that takes precautions then that I shall perhaps fail of if I too much interrupt your conversation."

"Isn't she nice to me," the Duchess asked of Mr. Longdon, "when I was in the very act of praising her to the skies?"

Their interlocutor's reply was not too rapid to anticipate Mrs. Brook herself. "My dear Jane, that only proves that he had reached some extravagance in the other sense that you had in mere decency to match. The truth is probably in the 'mean'—isn't that what they call it?—between you. Don't you now take him away," she went on to Vanderbank, who had glanced about for some better accommodation.

He immediately pushed forward the nearest chair, which happened to be by the Duchess's side of the sofa. "Will you sit here, sir?"

"If you'll stay here to protect me."

"That was really what I brought him over to you for," Mrs. Brook said while Mr. Longdon took his place and 342